THERE is not anything in this world half so capricious, and, during its short reign, so dictatorial as fashion. It has been said by some one that the world is governed by love and hunger, but we think fashion has also a seat in the cabinet. Fashion mocks at all trammels, and runs its short race defiantly; it encourages this week the same project or achievement which last week it frowned down into utter obscurity, and not the shrewdest prophet can tell what strange combination will be the next object of worship. Some years ago what would have been thought of ladies who skated in public upon sham ice? now the amusement has become completely naturalized amongst us, and the "Rink" is almost as well estab. lished in public favour as the "Row" is in the London season.

As with amusements so with literature. Some centuries ago the question was seriously argued by the learned men in France whether women should be taught the alphabet; but while the prosy old savans debated and disputed the point, the ladies - not for the first or last time-took the law into their own hands, and acquired not the alphabet only, but became learned and pedantic enough to excite the ridicule of Molière; they looked into political questions; they tried to solve ethical problems; so troublesome, in fact, did they become, that when Napoleon was goaded into

asking Madame de Staël, "Why will you women meddle in politics?" she answered for herself and the women of the first Empire in these words: "Sire, if you will hang us we must ask the reason."

Politics are not now fashionable enough to make women meddlesome in that department. It is true that a strong appeal is made at intervals for woman's suffrage, but it has never become a fashionable war cry. It is fashionable, however for women to write; so universal, indeed, has the occupation become that the women who do not write are rather the excepрtion than the rule. The ladies have almost completely routed the lords of the creation from the domain of light literature, and we think that in many instances they can fairly compete with men in the production not only of readable novels, but of novels that will live. Of course, we do not allude now to the "tag-rag-and-bobtail" of lady novelists, inexperienced girls, many of them, who do not know anything of life except what they have learned from novels immature and mawkish as those which they have themselves been idiotic enough to write and publish, probably at their own expense, but to writers such as George Eliot, the late Mrs. Gaskill, Mrs. Oliphant, Mrs. Edwards, Mrs. Alexander, Mrs. Lynn Linton, and some half-dozen others whom we could name.

We think it would be an excellent

plan for our best male and female writers to combine in the production of novels. Very few men can properly delineate the character of women; no man, except Shakspeare, has ever had an intuitive insight into the complexities of the feminine nature; and yet, if the women of to-day were to act always according to the dictates of that nature which he has so faithfully portrayed, we fear Mrs. Grundy would have some very severe things to say about them.

But if men fail in the delineation of women, do not women very often give us women in men's clothes for men? And would it not be an experiment worth trying to have a novel written conjointly by one of either sex. Of course, all our authors are not equally unsuccessful in their portrayal of women; many of them have given us real flesh and blood-not mere lay figures. Thackeray and Dickens have often been upheld as clever delineators of female character, but the women of the former are not lovable, and we prefer the Gamps and Prigs of Dickens to his young ladies, who are not by any means thoroughbred. BulwerLytton's heroines are all stagey; those of Charles Reade lack refinement, but still we infinitely prefer them to the types depicted in Wilkie Collins' later novels. In the somewhat wild, often fanciful, but always clever and well-written fictions of the late Mortimer Collins we have the best modern imitation -shall we call it? - of the Shakspearean woman, but, such is the fashion of the day, she is by no means as popular as her more namby-pamby sisters.

Black and Hardy can also describe women with praiseworthy fidelity, but while the heroines of Black's novels are charming in every sense of that comprehensive word, Hardy allows us to see too

plainly that he has not an exalted opinion of the fair sex, and his bias naturally appears in his works. His women have always great beauty but very little softness, and a great want of common sense and stability, especially in the conduct of their love affairs. A more unlovable creature than "Ethelberta," in Mr. Hardy's last novel, we have rarely met with, and yet the attributes which we are accustomed to

associate with unlovable women are not specially conspicuous in her character; she is simply a beautiful passionless creature, who

can

sit down to determine her course of action as regards the acceptance or rejection of an old roué, from whom she has had a proposal of marriage, by the perusal of a chapter in a volume of ethics and casuistry. She keeps her three lovers well in hand, and a fourth, for whom she has the faintest possible shadow of affection, she dismisses without a pang, and even plots to marry him to a sister of her own, who is as ready to fall in love idiotically as "Ethelberta" is to steer clear of such a common-place weakness. The men in the "Hand of Ethelberta" are mere puppets with whom the clever heroine plays fast and loose at will, and we can hardly blame her in the end for bestowing her much sought-for hand upon the least silly of the four-the old Lord Mountclere.

The lamentable failure of women to depict in fiction men, as we have known them in real life, cannot be denied, but thanks to the intuitive insight into the feelings that sway humanity, male and female, possessed more or less by all women capable of thought at alland surely writers ought to be thinkers-the mistakes made by our lady novelists in the delineation of their heroes are not so frequent and so absurd as those made by men with regard to their heroines.

Mrs. Oliphant is one of our most successful delineators of men-but she is at her best when she selects a certain type to represent a class -and Miss Mulock is one of our worst. It is scarcely too much to say that in not one of the many fictions written by the latter have we ever been fortunate enough to meet a man! We do not even except that popular favourite, "John Halifax." Miss Yonge describes boys and young men admirably, and George Eliot gives us real flesh and blood, but she very often gives us also the impression that she has as poor an ideal in her own mind of the male sex as Mr. Hardy has of the female; she sometimes writes about men as if she had a thorough contempt for them, and we can never forgive the marriage of the heroine of "Middlemarch" to the cousin of her learned and exceedingly disagreeable first husband; a youth of whom the wife of the rector so well said that he reminded her of "an Italian with whitemice."

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We have not had a Dickens, a Thackeray, or Walter Scott amongst our lady writers; woman has as yet proved herself capable of giving us the long and brilliant historical pageants of the Wizard of the North. She might be able to vie with him in anachronisms, but the power and the literary skill would be wanting to make her inaccuracies appear to us what history ought to have been. It may seem a "bull" for us to say that the nearest approach to Thackeray is to be found in a writer who preceded him, and to whom he may perhaps owe somewhat, we mean Jane Austin; and yet there are many people who cannot see the eynical humour that runs through her books, just as it does in those of the author of "Vanity Fair."

It is a curious fact that women, however witty we may find them in conversation and in correspondence, are not humorous in their novels. Mrs. Oliphant has a strong sense of humour, and she can paint the small foibles of human nature with a delicate and truthful hand, and Miss Thackeray has a fair share of her father's quaint half-pathetic, half-sorrowful satire. We do not dislike it, for it reminds us of the kindhearted author of "The Canebottomed Chair;" but as a rule women do not know how to be funny.

How is it that at the present day we have no female writers for the stage, and that we have never had an author amongst women capable of giving us a rival to the Rivals, the School for Scandal, or She Stoops to Conquer? But then it must be remembered how few women there are who can write dramatically (even if they had the opportunities that come so easily to men of studying stage effect), how little power they seem to have of concentrating all their force upon three or four telling situations. This rare and admirable faculty is, however, to be found in the works of two of our modern lady writers, with one of whom more especially the worshipful company of critics find excessive fault. We allude to Rhoda Broughton and Mrs. Edwards, the author of "Archie Lovell" and Ought we to Visit Her?" The sense of humour possessed by the former is very keen, but it is not yet sufficiently toned down; it is too broad, and the colours are splashed on without any care for harmony, light or shade; but her pathetic scenes are by far her strongest, and in them she displays considerable dramatic power. As an instance we may mention the meeting between Paul and Lenore Herrick in the Engadine.

Since the above remarks were written "Joan" has come out, and it is a matter of real regret to the admirers of Miss Broughton that she continues to deface her novels with coarse and flippant sentiments and speeches, and to parade her real or assumed contempt for religion. These blemishes are more than usually apparent in "Joan," and we think her publishers would do well, both for their own reputation, and also for that of the young writer herself, to exercise a rigid censorship upon her MSS. before they go to the printer. Surely Miss Broughton must feel ashamed, when she reads in print the following sentence in "Joan":"I never see a fat woman without wondering how she looks in her bath?" Such extreme coarseness and vulgarity needs no comment from us; we need but say that such obstinate outrages upon good tuste cannot fail to undermine the popularity of a writer even so undeniably clever as Miss Broughton.

We never send to the library for a novel by a new writer without a premonitory symptom of the disappointment which almost always attends upon perusal, especially if the book has been much praised by the Press. We have learned by experience to distrust those laudatory notices which are so freely quoted in the advertisements.

"Jenny of the Prince's" is the first published work of a Miss Buxton. We have been told that she has changed the spelling of her name, and that she is nearly related to Buckstone the actor, but we suspect that the fact of her novel being a theatrical one may have given rise to the rumour. "Jenny of the Prince's" was, the author tells us in her preface, written with the view of showing that a young girl may go on the stage and yet preserve her purity and good name intact. Not many

will, we suppose, be found to deny this assertion, but if the author of "Jenny" is under the impression that she has proved her case in her novel, the sooner she recovers from her delusion the better.

It is far from our wish to discourage a new writer, but a work with so few claims to literary merit as "Jenny of the Prince's" would not be entitled to any special notice amongst recent novels were it not for its avowed intention to be a novel with a purpose. If it was a dangerous experiment for a young and pretty woman to go on the stage-and everyone will admit that in nine cases out of ten the danger is real, not imaginarysurely it is a great mistake for the author of "Jenny" so to fence in her heroine with safeguards on every side that she is never once subjected to anything more disagreeable than the nickname of the "Little Lady; " and as to temptation, as we understand the term, it never once assails her in any form whatsoever. From the moment of her flight from her uncle's house in Liverpool to her marriage with Mr. Frank Kelly, she is hedged round by admiring friends. She has not a prolonged and painful struggle with adverse fortune, a position which would have been in every way calculated to enhance the peril of the temptations to which she ought to have been exposed, and she is never in want of money.

Surely we have a right to protest against such a false picture of life as the above, and if any pretty clever and enthusiastic young girl is tempted to go upon the stage by the perusal of Jenny's mythical trials during her short career at "Prince's," the author will be to blame for having written three volumes to prove that a woman can withstand dangers which undoubtedly exist, but under the influence of which she is never drawn.

Any notice, however slight, of the novels of the past year, would be incomplete without some mention of "Daniel Deronda." The announcement of a new novel by the author of "Adam Bede" always creates an immense amount of interest in the literary world, not so much amongst the confirmed novel readers-the large majority who read for amusement-but amongst those who consider that it is an opportunity lost of adding to the cultivation of their intellects if they failed to read, and read carefully too, every line penned by one who has so often charmed the world of letters.

It seems hard, as we have each year so few really good novels, that when our best writer brings out a new work it should be comparatively a failure; we say comparatively, for "Daniel Deronda," although a disappointment from the pen of George Eliot, would be a grand achievement for any other writer. Of George Eliot's "later manner" so much has been said already by abler pens than ours, that it would be waste of time to enter upon a full discussion of it here. Let it suffice to say that, in spite of the gravity of the story, if "Daniel Deronda" had been writ. ten with the exquisite charm of style with which up to the present time we have always been able to associate the name of George Eliot, it would have been as popular as any of her works; but when we take up a novel in which we find a heroine such as Gwendolene, and a hero such as Deronda, we are sufficiently repelled without being vexed and bewildered by the hard metallic glitter of the writer's new style. As well might we accept the artificial moonlight upon the stage for the soft radiance of the real planet in the heavens! In "Daniel Deronda" the author strains our patience and the English language

to the utmost, and we trust that the vehement and universal protest which has been entered by the press against the introduction of scientific jargon into a work of fiction, will induce the gifted author to let us have once more some of the magic we love so well. As to Deronda himself, his insufferable priggishness and conceit made us rejoice when he at last made up his great mind to become a Jew. We can now, with a fine assumption of Christian charity, avenge ourselves for the boredom we suffered at his hands by praying for him with the infidels and heretics whom we too often meet with in modern fiction!

We have had three very clever novels from Mr. Thomas Hardy, and when we read "Far from the Madding Crowd," we began to think that a writer who could run a fair race with George Eliot upon her own ground had come amongst us; but in his latest production, "The Hand of Ethelberta," he has wofully disappointed us. The book is very clever, but Mr. Hardy cannot have been serious in giving it to the public as a work of literary It is full of quaint conceits and comic situations; in fact, the author, in choosing for the book its second title-viz, a "Comedy in Chapters"-shows that he is quite aware of the character of his work. But we have already discussed "The Hand of Ethelberta" at sufficient length for our purpose.

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"A New Godiva," by Stanley Hope, is a very pretty book, thoroughly readable throughout, and it has besides the merit of being original. All true women will sympathize with the self-sacrifice of Kate, the heroine, while men will inevitably echo the declaration of Sir Arthur, the hero, that he would rather have died of starvation than have been saved as his devoted wife saved him.

One of the most fascinating, if